All that dark earth heaved
in mighty travail with the bursting bolls of the cotton while black
attendant earth spirits swarmed above, sweating and crooning to its
birth pains.
After the miracle of the bursting bolls, when the land was brightest
with the piled mist of the Fleece, and when the cry of the naked was
loudest in the mouths of men, a sudden cloud of workers swarmed between
the Cotton and the Naked, spinning and weaving and sewing and carrying
the Fleece and mining and minting and bringing the Silver till the Song
of Service filled the world and the poetry of Toil was in the souls of
the laborers. Yet ever and always there were tense silent white-faced
men moving in that swarm who felt no poetry and heard no song, and one
of these was John Taylor.
He was tall, thin, cold, and tireless and he moved among the Watchers of
this World of Trade. In the rich Wall Street offices of Grey and
Easterly, Brokers, Mr. Taylor, as chief and confidential clerk surveyed
the world's nakedness and the supply of cotton to clothe it. The object
of his watching was frankly stated to himself and to his world. He
purposed going into business neither for his own health nor for the
healing or clothing of the peoples but to apply his knowledge of the
world's nakedness and of black men's toil in such a way as to bring
himself wealth.
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